Project Portfolio Decisions

British Airways make portfolio move as it places an ERP project on hold, ahead of vendor selection, to conserve cash. ...

... "Walsh said BA would consider such a system, along with other big cash hungry projects in around two years time, when hopefully the economic turmoil had died down. " ...

Via UK IT PRO: BA ERP Decision

Governing Structure Enables Project Success Factors

Survey yields insights into the project management oversight practices of mid-market firms. While software and process helps, a functioning governance structure enables the investment conversations and portfolio transparency, which set the foundation for project success. ...

... "the existence of a governance structure determined how successful an organization would be in terms of IT project efficiency, customer satisfaction and project completion. " ...

Via Search CIO: IT project governance

Power Project Reviews

Raytheon's information technology group delivers sustainability achievements through server virtualization and other data center improvements, while establishing a process that ensures efficient computing is part of the IT culture. ...

... "The company's IT project management process now includes power reviews to ensure that project teams estimate power consumption of new systems and work in advance to achieve reductions. " ...

Via Computerworld, IDG: Raytheon IT

Crowdsource Collaboration Breaks Barrier

BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos breaks the Netflix barrier through collaboration model. ...

... "Today our team submitted our solution to the Netflix Prize, resulting in a score of .8558, which corresponds to an improvement over Netflix Cinematch algorithm of 10.05%. This is the first submission in the competition to break the 10% barrier and sets off a 30 day period where all competitors are invited to submit their best and final solutions. " ...

Link

CFO CIO Collaboration

How best to bridge the gap between CFO and CIO perspectives? Well-written business cases. Balance of tangible and business-relevant measures. A functioning governance process. Staffed governing council(s). A business-savvy IT strategic story. What else? ...

... "ROI doesn't always capture the true value of an IT project, but CFOs pretty much insist on some sort of ROI calculation. Suggesting other sorts of metrics that measure the full impact of a technology rollout might get the CFO in the CIO's corner. " ...

Via CIOZone Forum, Discussion Thread: Collaboration Mechanism across CIO/CTO/CFO

G-Cloud Project

Government leaders are looking to the cloud computing model as a means to leverage their IT applications investment, so that over time a robust application portfolio is available to the community. ...

... "Development of G-cloud is to be made a priority, according to the Digital Britain report, and while the plan is developed over the next three years, all other IT services procurement should look to follow a similar model in preparation. " ...

Via UK Computing: Government app store

Accountability System

New CIO institutes early-warning triggers for project management, that could stop project investment if circuit breaker trips. ...

... "He's put in place the Program Management Accountability System that will require program managers to deliver systems and applications incrementally rather than all at once ... " ...

Via FierceGovernmentIT: New VA CIO

CIO Perspective on IT Project Management

Working Capital Impact

Target comatose servers to reduce capital requirements and ultimately increase energy efficiency. ...

. .. "Every comatose commodity server shut down or eliminated by consolidation or physical virtualization, recovers between $1,500 and $2,500 in CapEx capacity. " ...

Via Forbes: IT Energy

Green Shoots from IT Projects

What will drive the recovery? Will the technology industry have a role as a leader or a lagger? Let's get cracking on those IT project proposals. ...

... "If there's good news from the Gartner study, it's that CIOs aren't canceling projects outright. CIOs report shifting more work to in-house resources and delaying capital expenditures more than reducing IT project investments ... " ...

Via Motley Fools: Technology Industry Perspectives

Make Business Case for Strategics

Load up your project portfolio with operational efficiency projects that deliver tangible returns. Always add a few strategic investments that speak directly to enabling important business strategies, where IT can support innovative business models or a differentiated position in the marketplace. Prove to the CFO that you understand the business. ...

... "If an IT project is neither simple nor fast, it may still get funding if you can show how it supports the enterprise’s top strategic goals. Use financial measures to make your case. " ...

Via SMART ENTERPRISE: Convince the CFO

Data Center Visual Map

HP offers solutions for data centers with scale that include visual maps of environmental performance for energy tuning and optimization. ...

... "The HP Data Center Environmental Edge solution offers a complete visual mapping of environmental variables so customers can quickly identify and take action on data center inefficiencies. " ...

Via HP: Scale-out Computing

PRINCE2 Refresh Ready in July

Prince2 2009 refresh is due out shortly with content changes and improvements. ...

... "The most significant change in the PRINCE2 2009 refresh is that there will now be two books: Managing Successful Projects Using PRINCE2 and a new Directing Successful Projects Using PRINCE2 manual which will be laid out in a way that makes them easier to understand and navigate. " ...

Via ILX Group: PRINCE2 2009

Project Pain is Indicator of Gain

Leading CIO embraces pain as evidence of positive transformational impact. ... ie: improvements in process capability and maturity will cause setbacks and discomfort. This leadership acknowledges and embraces this reality upfront in the project principles. ...

... "Our business processes and practices will change significantly, and we will accept some disruption to achieve the ultimate benefits. " ...

Via Information Week: Acknowledge Transformation Challenges

Real-Time Project Events: Your Buns are Cooked

Here's creative use of twitter for business. Think about the event-driven project, real-time status, and transparency. ...

... "All of the baker's followers get a Twitter alert to tell them that it's bun-time. Or bread time. Or whatever. " ...

Via Baker Tweet: Tweet What's Fresh

BakerTweet from POKE on Vimeo.

Dashboard Transparency

Expect increased transparency in IT from the current administration, with fresh-look CIO dashboard ready for updated content. ...

... "A few days later at the Management of Change conference in Norfolk, Va., Kundra publicly unveiled the IT dashboard, surprising and exciting both CIOs and vendors alike. " ...

Via Federal News Radio: CIO dashboard

Perspectives on Agile Scrum

Six Power Tips for Simplifying Project Management

Gantthead is showcasing their Agile articles this week, and one of the articles was a piece I wrote on Simplifying Project Management. In the article I discuss "six power tips" for simplifying how we approach project management:

1. The Power of Checklists, which reduce errors without adding red tape and extensive approvals or oversight
2. The Power of Process Summits, which allow everyone to clearly see redundancies and inefficiencies when looking at the “whole system”
3. The Power of The Trash Can, which encourages lean thinking and eliminates waste
4. The Power of Brand Strategy, which fosters a focused and customer-oriented mindset
5. The Power of Service Standards, which give people simple priorities by which to operate and make decisions
6. The Power of Inclusion, which increases the likelihood of purposeful documents, greater buy-in and active engagement

For more, read on... (you may need to register, but it's free)

http://www.gantthead.com/content/articles/249024.cfm

Govern IT Now

It's never too late to start IT governance. ... Start developing a starter set of business cases. Recruit a few non-IT executives to join the CIO in a governance forum. ... And, start practicing the conversations. Commit to improving the experience for the participants at each governance event. It's a journey. ...

... "When companies attempt too tight of a reign over IT projects, end-users figure out ways to get around it. Not enough governance, and IT projects fail to live up to business expectations. " ...

Via Insurance Networking: IT Governance Call to Action

Wave Communications in Projects

Google demonstrates its Wave communication product and you can see its powerful applicability to collaborating project teams. ...

Innovation Self Assessment

Take the test, if you dare. ...

... "How do you really know if you are an innovator? Is it based on the number of patents you hold? " ...

Via Innovation in Practice: YOU an Innovator?

CyberSecurity Role

New cyber-security role to be created in US Government. The information and network security strategy will be refreshed. Cross-governmental integration and public / private partnerships will be used to strengthen the quality of this effort. Protection of privacy remains a key principle. ...

... "Today, I want to focus on the important responsibilities this office will fulfill: orchestrating and integrating all cybersecurity policies for the government; working closely with the Office of Management and Budget to ensure agency budgets reflect those priorities; and, in the event of major cyber incident or attack, coordinating our response. To ensure that federal cyber policies enhance our security and our prosperity, my Cybersecurity Coordinator will be a member of the National Security Staff as well as the staff of my National Economic Council. To ensure that policies keep faith with our fundamental values, this office will also include an official with a portfolio specifically dedicated to safeguarding the privacy and civil liberties of the American people. " ...

Via The White House: Cyber Infrastructure

Want Fries with that Data Center

A sign of the times ... Syracuse works with IBM to create efficient data center with cogen facility. The University will use the facility to lead and to learn. ...

... "SU will manage and analyze the performance of the center, as well as research and develop new data center energy efficiency analysis and modeling tools. IBM will provide more than $5 million in equipment, design services and support, which includes supplying the electrical cogeneration equipment and servers such as IBM BladeCenter, IBM Power 575 and an IBM z10 systems. " ...

Via IBM: Syracuse University Data Center

Shampoo or Conditioner, Which is Better

Life is full of dilemmas. And, that's a good thing. Be prepared to achieve the appropriate balance in your innovation portfolio. Try a few scenario plans for good measure. And, get comfortable when these natural tensions present themselves. ...

... "A common mistake is to reduce innovation because you do not have enough R&D resources to develop the ideas. The irony of this dilemma is that you can actually accelerate development by spending more time on ideating. " ...

Via Innovation in Practice: Dilemmas

Reframe for Resources

Stanford author and leader, Tina Seelig, teaches students at STVP how to reframe their problems and leverage scarce resources to innovate. ...

... "They often involve identifying other people who can help, leveraging work that has been done before, or combining ideas in new and interesting ways. " ...

Via OPEN Forum by American Express: Make Your Place

We're Doomed

Or, are we. Changing core systems requires strong understanding of the current enterprise architecture, a vision for the future, and a realistic transition plan to get there. Somewhere in that tangle of systems is the value-adding business logic that must be preserved. ...

... "Citi’s IT honchos have the same problem that Microsoft’s do: everything they do needs to be backwards-compatible with everything that went before" ...

Via Reuters, Felix Salmon: Citigroup’s IT strategy

Project Managers Seek Points of View through Collaboration to Gain Strength

In a challenging phase of your project? Not sure what scenario will play out? Feel the weight on your shoulders as project manager? Hold steady on the tiller. And, open up and collaborate, per Bernanke, to educate yourself and your team on the opposing points of view. ...

... "Bernanke argued that a spirit of open-mindedness and intellectual modesty has driven his response to the financial crisis. " ...

Via Washingtonpost: Emerge Stronger

BC Commencement Address.

Project Value Delivery

I like the idea of transforming business cases into the value delivery story with the enabling plan. We should strive for this in the information technology space. Our historical challenge is being able to identify and articulate business value in the first place. But, as we mature, planning for the achievement of value is the next goal. Project plans will not be able to end at system go-live or stabilization. Plans will have to be extended to user adoption, competency demonstration, and organizational process performance and maturity. ...

... "So, we’ve got to change the business case and make it value-focused; centred around the value proposition. Then we’ve got to make the project plan value-focused ... " ...

Via CIO Australia: The New Business Case

Project Management Model Positioned for Business Success

Lowe's adapts its project management model and tests it as a customer experience differentiator, to position the company for success as the business cycle evolves. ...

... "One of the ways we are doing that is by testing a centralized project management model that will enable Lowe's to capture an increased share of project revenue while providing an experience that will differentiate Lowe's. We will provide more details as this test continues but we are optimistic these changes will position us very well for the eventual increase in project demand when economic conditions improve. " ...

Via Seeking Alpha: Lowe's Earnings Call

Lean Software

Consortium formed to further the integration of lean principles into the software development process. ...

... "LeanSSC is a global, non-profit organization whose mission is to promote professionalism and create awareness of lean science and associated competencies by creating and promoting a body of knowledge and an associated certification program. " ...

Link : Lean Software and Systems Consortium

Knowledge Project

Leverage online expertise ...

... "long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone. " ...

Wolfram Alpha Knowledge Engine

Scalable Project Discipline

Should we classify projects by size and scale project discipline using size (cost / effort) as the meter for project discipline? I've seen that more often, since investment size (cost / effort) at risk warrants discipline to improve likelihood of success.

But how about situations when various size projects (including small ones) are critical to business success and either time or quality of the deliverable is the key business driver. Business critical projects are worthy of a disciplined method of delivery.

Or, should we ignore size, etc. and achieve a level of PMO maturity that operates at such an efficient level of productivity and project volume throughput that the project management discipline is optimal across the full portfolio?

What do you think? ...

... "there must be a dividing line between projects that are complex and critical enough to require a full, rigorous methodology, and those projects that are simple and routine enough to be managed with minimal project overhead. The question is: Where is that line? " ...

Via TechRepublic: Project size classification determines rigor

Building Better Dashboards: A New Way to Promote Accountability

It's amazing the things you can find on Twitter. I saw an interesting tweet by Dr. John Estrella referencing his blog post on a new way to present dashboard information.

Rather that showing red/yellow/green status on milestones or work packages, Estrella suggests tying those status indicators to the teams or individuals on the project. This way, ambiguities are reduced and accountability gets distributed across the project team instead of leaving everything accountable to the project manager.

I could even see a hybrid, where team or individuals, along with their major deliverables are listed. So, a team or individual with multiple major deliverables would be listed multiple times. This still promotes distributed accountability, but keeps the focus on outcomes. Under this scenario, it's also important to list prerequisite deliverables (i.e. interdependencies).

It's an interesting concept that has generated positive results to date. Read on for more...

http://blog.johnestrella.com/2009/05/a-better-way-to-present-dashboard-report/